New Year, New Approach

A rather belated ‘Happy New Year’ to all. After a lovely lazy recharge over the Christmas break, getting back to reality has been a little slow for January thus far in our household. Rather than booking lots of activities and obligatory visits to hardly ever seen friends and relatives, we had a little period of hibernation. It was a lovely feeling not quite knowing what day it was and having a great stretch of time to fill with absolutely nothing. Even the Nipper relaxed somewhat and his daily 8am lie-in’s were glorious.

Prior to Christmas, we’d had a really bad run of bugs, virus’s and colds that really wore us all down so by the time the festive period was actually upon us, we were really rather shattered. And, you don’t realise just how run down and poorly you’ve been until you actually start to feel better and see the world beyond the oh-so-not-glamorous lemsip and immodium haze.

And with a renewed spring in my step and enthusiasm for pretty much life in general, the timing couldn’t be better to consider 2015 and how I want to experience the forthcoming year. Rather than the obligatory New Years resolutions (which can be like a monkey on my back until I fail with them and then they become the black cloud of moodiness), I’ve decided to have a think about my approach to the day-to-day of my life rather than defined tasks or goals, though of course the latter will undoubtedly naturally arise as a result.

I’ve decided to break things down into chunks (for those of you NLP’ers you’ll be familiar with this approach). Rather than seeing certain aspects of my life as the epic, long and enormous road I may at times struggle to navigate, I’ve decided to try and break things down by working out what the next landmark is that I’m trying to get to rather than the final destination. For work, a 1 year or 5 year business plan is all very well but the fundamental (and lets be honest, sometimes tedious) day to day tasks that contribute to monthly results shouldn’t be overlooked or undervalued when compared to the ‘big stuff’. Rather than being over faced by a massive goal, I’ve decided to concentrate on some of the smaller wins that will get me to that final destination i.e. working on my product knowledge, build my network, fixing annoying IT issues that can speed up production. Each of these aspects can in themselves be broken down further so they appear achievable and manageable…….as they all are.

The other thing I want to do this year is capture my memories. Disaster struck a few weeks ago when my iphone keeled over and I realised that 3000 photos (mainly of my son since he was a newborn) were potentially gone forever…….yes there was a loud scream! Happily all was retrieved but it made me think about how magical it is for me to go through my parents family albums and look at photos of myself as a child. I’m ashamed to admit that we probably only have 1/2 a dozen photos of the toddling monster actually printed off – the rest are on various digital devices. So I’ve decided to jump on the Project Life scrapbooking bandwagon. I’m not going to lie, sorting out the 3000 unprinted photos is going to be a complete pain in the ass but the theory is that that with a structured way in which to document memories moving forward, I’ll also perhaps value the experiences as I’m in them within in my own mind and imprint them a little more clearly. And of course, document them as I go along rather than leaving it until I have a massive backlog to clear! That’s the idea anyway.

The third thing I want to do is to be a little more open to new experiences, rather than immediately ruling them out as ‘not my thing’. I had a go at this one last night when I attended my 1st ever WI meeting which was all about burlesque dancing…… who’d have thought it! That one deserves a post all of its own!

I’ll let you know how I get on and I hope your 2015 is all you wish it to be.